213

Impaired
Posted on April 13, 2024 by David M Willis

213 thoughts on “Impaired”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    Drunk? Joyce: “FLICK”

    Drunk Dotty: “YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…………….. wait…?”

    1. Dara

      “Dammit Joyce I am not falling for your kerning tricks!”

    2. M!a

      HEYYYYY YOU CHEATEDEDeded…

      …ded

    3. Jesse

      “Wait, why did I *hear* it differently…?”
      *Looks at the readers*
      “Oh my go–“

    4. Weatherheight

      Since no one else has said it…
      “Fuckity fuck, the fucking fucker’s fucking fucked. Now you say it, Joyce – it’s likw a tongue twister!”

    5. ValdVin

      Impaired judgment? Not sure.

      But Dotty’s still able to coordinate her chanting and rhythm section.

      1. Casi

        actually her percussion is off beat, drifting by a quarter note each time, also she’s trying to do a 7/8 time signature

        1. Opus the Poet

          She’s doing “four-five time”. It’s a catchy little song. And apparently it has been removed from my music service. :p

        2. ValdVin

          Wait, 7/8ths or 4/5ths time sigs?

          Is Hannelore her second cousin?

  2. Amós Batista

    WHOOAA, SHE MADE IT!

  3. NGPZ

    *plays “That’s Amore” by Dean Martin on hacked muzak*

    1. RassilonTDavros

      You’ve had too much wine.

  4. Animedingo

    How is she this much of a light weight she had 2 sips

    1. Thag Simmons

      She is very small

      1. Needfuldoer

        Yeah, in general somebody built like Dorothy will feel it faster than someone built like Joyce, even if they drink exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.

        1. LiamKav

          Yeah, but from a biological POV that booze hasn’t even hit het intestines yet, so unless she got drunk on the fumes…

          (Yeah, it’s a comic and we probably don’t want to sit around for 20 minutes waiting for it to kick in. Although if she has been skipping meals, it could be as quick as 5 minutes. Plus I’m happy to go with the placebo excuse anyway which is a significant factor with drink)

        2. Needfuldoer

          Comic time applies to them both equally, I guess.

          The old continuity also apparently has precedent for Joyce having a high tolerance.

        3. gryfft

          Alcohol can enter the bloodstream from the stomach, and it can hit the small intestine immediately if drinking on an empty stomach

        4. Lena

          It took 20 minutes between comics to convince Joyce to take that sip. In the meantime Dorothy got a second drink.

        5. Adept

          Alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream even directly from the membranes in your mouth. At least this is what I seem to remember.

        6. Inahc

          yup! I’m not sure how *much* is absorbed, but, I’ve had sublingual meds before. it’s a thing.

    2. bubba0077

      She slammed a double-shot at the bar before returning with the cocktails.

    3. GholaHalleck

      Could be lots of reasons! Genetics, lack of sleep, lack of food, possible medication interactions.

      1. vlademir1

        We do know that Dotty hasn’t been sleeping properly recently and her tendencies suggest she’s been running as functional through exhaustion for a while, both of which have implications here. Further she’s shown tendencies to under eat at times, which also has implications here. Add in that she’s been shown exhibiting some anxiety disorder symptoms over the course of this comic’s run, which she could be medicated for and which medications generally do have alcohol interactions. Now on top of that she’s got a rather low body mass for Willis’s fem characters and we’ve seen others suggest alcohol for her today and may have provided her some earlier.

        1. Proxiehunter

          Getting medicated for her anxiety would require admitting to a doctor that she had anxiety issues which would then go on her medical record and potentially cause problems with her electability. It’s possible that now that she’s rethinking her presidential ambitions she’ll look into getting medicated for her anxiety issues but I doubt she currently is.

      2. Reltzik

        Subconscious repressed desire to let loose catalyzed by the slightest bit of pretext from a half-finished drink…

      3. Azhrei Vep

        Also, Placebo effect.

        1. Steamweed

          Yep, that can work. Expecting to be sloshed can lead to getting sloshed.

    4. Needfuldoer

      Another thing she had in common with Walky.

    5. Amós Batista

      She drank half of the cup. And it’s a huge ass cup.

      1. Myth

        Joyce drank about three-quarters of the cup, though, if you compare. So that’s not necessarily a defense for Dotty being drunk quicker than Joyce. Still a good point, though!

    6. Mturtle7

      Social effect! Dotty really WANTS to get drunk right now, and those two sips – and more importantly, being surrounded by other drunk people – provided a very handy excuse for her psyche to simulate that effect.

    7. ian livs

      I have a friend who will get like that after a few sips. For that matter, so do I, though it’s more psychosomatic for me for sure

    8. John Campbell

      She’s on her fifth drink. It took Joyce that long to finally take the plunge.

  5. IntangibleMatter

    Dorothy is a total lightweight and no one is surprised at all.

    Joyce is on babysitter duty.

    1. James

      Could be a partial placebo effect, Dorothy’s needed to unwind and cut loose for a WHILE.

      That said, there are also drunky bubbles around her head, so who knows.

      1. NGPZ

        Yee, in this comic those bubbles are usually a surefire indicator as to whether or not someone is intoxicated XD

      2. Needfuldoer

        She only needed a couple nips to get like this with Ruth last time.
        https://www.dumbingofage.com/sustainable/

        We only saw her drink one beer on-screen at karaoke night, but that was enough to give her the boozles in the strip immediately after. (Assuming she didn’t have anything in between, anyway.)

        https://www.dumbingofage.com/courtesy-2/

        She’s a lightweight, and she needs to be careful this doesn’t become a habit. Social drinking could very well become self-medicating.

        1. NGPZ

          And if it does worse case scenario, at the very least Jennifer has experience dealing with alcoholism and could offer much needed support.

          Best case scenario, this becomes a one-off girls night out thing.

          We’ll just have to wait and see…

        2. HueSatLight

          All the “Dorothy is a lightweight” posts put an image in my head that I could only excise by editing one of today’s panels.

    2. Warcodered

      I’m not sure with her recent spiral how true this still could be, but I wouldn’t be surprised with the overwork if her stomach is pretty empty which would not help her tolerance at all. Joyce on the other hand eats.

  6. shadowcell

    damn Dorothy, doesn’t take much, does it

    1. NGPZ

      yeah she’s a lightweight for reals XD

  7. Sirksome

    Dorothy’s kind of a light weight.

  8. Jenniffniff

    Any chance Dorothy ordered Joyce’s drink without alcohol?

    1. RassilonTDavros

      Hope not, that would be a little mean of her.

    2. bubba0077

      I suspected she might get virgin cocktails for both of them, but I guess the drunk bubbles dispel that theory.

    3. Coatl

      Damn… that sounds likely, it is assumed that the objective of this was for Dorohty to relax and the fact that she was the one who ordered the drinks suggests that Joyce was given it without alcohol, or ordered it with a very low portion.

      And now this, Dorothy is already falling very quickly into the effect of the drink and if suddenly she reveals the nightmare or something more confidential that no one knows…..yes, I know that many are betting that Joyce “saved” Dorothy …. but it is inevitable to think that the result is uncertain.

    4. HueSatLight

      I wondered if she ordered it half-strength. No booze would become apparent.
      Still half-strength would be a bad call, Joyce is learning her limit, and it would be off by a factor of x2. Dorothy deciding what’s best for everyone and being wrong would not be out of character.

      1. Pergola

        Halfsies for my friend. Double for me.

    5. Amós Batista

      If it was true, I’ll dislike Dorothy for real. That’s not fair to Joyce, she really want to experience it and her friend could do this to her…

      1. Coatl

        I feel that at this point, getting angry with Dorothy would be too much, I mean, she has received so much hate that maybe something will be revealed here and the perception of her will change.

        That Joyce would feel offended, maybe yes, but she proposed all this because she really appreciates Dorothy and it may reveal the nightmare that she has kept quiet lately, yes, it’s a 50/50 outcome and betting that Joyce will be able to help Dorothy on this is very risky.

        1. GholaHalleck

          I’m pretty sure Joyce has a high tolerance level still, some folks just do. Dotty’s been running on fumes for a while so she’s probably gotten backhanded by madame vodka.

        2. Coatl

          What happens later…is what worries the most.

        3. Pergola

          Hey girlies! You look lonely. Wanna have some fun?

    6. bejouled

      That… Would make sense. I am a picky eater, although not as bad as Joyce, and I can’t stand the taste of alcohol. Never been able to drink a whole cocktail like that. I was very surprised to see Joyce was able to.

    7. Bash

      It seems like Joyce was tasting something besides juice, but who knows.

    8. Mturtle7

      No, that would just be disappointing. It’s going to be MUCH funnier when we find out that Joyce has nigh-supernatural levels of alcohol tolerance, and drinks like 4 or these cocktails (including the ones she quietly removes from Dorothy’s side of the bar) before getting even slightly buzzed.

  9. Schpoonman

    Yeah, you can see the bubbles above Dorothy’s head already.

    1. M!a

      “Boozles” as Berkeley Breathed called em once.

      1. StClair

        I’m partial to root boozles, m’self.

      2. Needfuldoer

        I thought “Boozles” were the little green bartenders on Fraggle Rock.

      3. Daibhid C

        Ooh, that’s a much better one than “squeans”, which is what Mort Walker’s Lexicon of Comicana calls them.

  10. RassilonTDavros

    Dorothy is almost as much of a lightweight as Walky, I see.

    1. Coatl

      Now that I think about it, it seems that she achieved half-control with the wine, well, later and now it is seen that alcohol, well, is not exactly appropriate.

  11. Jeremiah

    Dorothy this is not the way to seduce her.

    1. GholaHalleck

      You shut your mouth, I *need* to see Joyce mother Dotty like she’s a baby bird. The role reversal will be delicious.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Yes!

        Personally I’d like this to be the moment Joyce realizes why Dorothy mom-friends her so much.

    2. Rose by Any Other Name

      … actually, I’m kinda wondering if this is setting up a seduction joke.

      Like, later in the evening, Joyce will say “fuck” but in a sexual context.
      Or in a “I just kissed someone other than my boyfriend” context.
      You know, one of them.

    3. Mturtle7

      It is, however, the IDEAL way to seduce Dorothy! At least if her relationship with Walky is anything to go by.

      1. Mturtle7

        Seriously, if you degenerates are going to ship Dorothy and Joyce (which I do NOT support, for the record), at LEAST have a proper understanding of who would be the bottom in that situation! Honestly, some people…

  12. Ty34er

    Oh no, Willis, you can’t just give all these panels to the Dorothy-Joyce shippers!

    1. Dara

      i am very much enjoying panel 4 in this chilis tonight 😀

      1. Woop de doop

        Yessss and panel 5 Dorothy is fun and boisterous and I am happy

    2. Amós Batista

      This is killing me. (Just kidding, I’m adoring all this storyline).

    3. M!a

      Hush, you. 😛

    4. clif

      Too late.

  13. Puppeteer Nessus

    Now the bar fight!

    1. Coatl

      Oh God, I think the roles are going to be invented, Dorothy will want to hit the first guy who walks by and it will be Joyce who has to stop that… although I think it would be the opposite and end up in a kind of Royal Rumble bar version

      1. Coatl

        *The roles can be reversed

        1. clif

          and then inverted.

  14. Dara

    I always forget what a lightweight Dorothy is. Watch Joyce be the kind of girl who can drink anybody else under the table. This is hilarious. xD

    1. Dara

      Tho’ I do wonder how much of this is just tension release. That can feel kinda like the effects of alcohol too.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Dorothy’s got herself so tightly wound up, letting herself unwind is going to be forceful.

  15. HueSatLight

    When you decide to text Tristan, that’s when you have impaired judgment.

    1. HueSatLight

      The second best thing of this whole excursion is anticipating Dorothy loosing Jason’s grad school math book.

    2. Taffy

      Joyce texting Tristan a mildly incoherent solicitation for dick pics like “lol hi tristan ? show me ur cock to own the libs? the woke mob wants to cut it off and nail it to a cross ✝️”

  16. maxh

    Dorothy is going to get them both chucked out before Joyce finishes a single drink, isn’t she?

  17. BBCC

    Jeez, Dorothy, way to lightweight!

  18. Pocky

    in this corner; we have our Blonde four eyed lightweight champion!

  19. Dday

    Kinda reminds me of how this played out in Walkyverse, Joyce drank a big mug of her first beer and just wanted another one. I think that was also when we met “nice” Mike.
    Huuhhh I wonder if we’re about to encounter some kind of message Mike left behind when drunk…

  20. John Campbell

    Nice double tap, Dorothy, but you’re still in last place.

  21. Woop de doop

    I used to not like tomatoes, then I got older and decided tomatoes are okay, good even sometimes.

    1. NGPZ

      I like ’em in salsa and Chilean pebre :9

    2. M!a

      It’s the seeds, innit? The seeds and the weird gooey stuff…

      1. GholaHalleck

        Texture. Its always the texture. as salsa? Utterly Fine, even tasty.

        As a disk of raw tomato? Vile.

        Remove this not-food from my food-food this instant. How dare you.

        Same thing with raw vs grilled onion.

        1. Jeremiah

          I I am the opposite, I love tomato slices in a sandwich (not as much by themselves) but can’t stand even looking at tomate sauce. (Unless you count ketchup as a sauce).

        2. someone

          Fun fact: ketchup was originally a Chinese fish sauce. Then the British discovered it and decided to make it with mushrooms instead of fish. Then the Americans decided to make it with tomatoes instead of mushrooms, and to add sugar. And then the Philippines decided to make it with bananas instead of tomatoes.

        3. GholaHalleck

          I like to think of ketchup as tomato jam.

      2. Bittersweet

        That’s the best part to me. I liked pretending to be Bunnicula and drinking the tomato blood until I was left with a tomato husk.

      3. Woop de doop

        Yep. I like its taste though. And I love it in soup.

    3. HueSatLight

      I love em more than Denethor. Kudos to all the Mesoamerican farmers who cultivated them.

    4. Needfuldoer

      I swear they’ve bred tomatoes to have more… tomato meat? to them since I was a kid. (Or maybe my mom just bought the cheap tomatoes back then.)

    5. zee

      They’re good with cheese on them. Ant type of cheese instantly makes a tomato good. Those canned steamed diced tomatoes are really nice in a quick pasta too, esp with packaged Alfredo. Could just be my nutrient starved college body talking though, weeping grateful any time I eat a single fruit or vegetable

    6. Yumi

      I really like tomatoes, as does my mom. My dad, however, detests raw tomatoes. Rather than being an innate dislike, however, he traces it back to a summer he spent on his aunt and uncle’s tomato farm as a kid, where apparently he ate so many tomatoes that he never wanted to have them again. It has been 60 years.

    7. Mark

      I sometimes think I’m the only living Hoosier who isn’t mad for raw tomatoes. Nowadays I’ll tolerate them but I wouldn’t ask for them. You want me to like ’em? make a nice sauce with ’em.

  22. M!a

    /me queues up “UR So Gay” on the hacked Muzak

    1. Needfuldoer

      They probably think this song is about them?

  23. Cmasta1992

    Wow Dorothy is a super lightweight.

    The Dorothy/Joyce shippers are definitely gonna eat in this storyline.

    1. Woop de doop

      NOM NOM MMMMmmmmmm

  24. Jesse

    Drunk Dorothy is immediately fun. Also, I love that Joyce’s idea of “Impaired judgement” is “eating tomatoes”.

    1. Mturtle7

      In Joyce’s nightmares, she’s tempted into sin by an incredibly handsome demon with a bottle of booze, then blacks out and wakes up the next morning next to…the disgusting, pulpy remains of dozens of raw tomatoes, their juice dried stickily all over her mouth. THE HORROR, THE HORROR

      1. Jesse

        Ha!

  25. Thomas

    Ah yes, impaired judgement, the main reason why people drink alcohol. It’s never because they want to relax a little. Noooo, people drink because they want to get stupid f*cking drunk, which somehow counts as an achievement that they brag about afterwards.

    1. StClair

      I’ve never been tempted to drink heavily, because I was (and still am) quite capable of making very poor decisions while mostly or entirely sober, thank you.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Same.

        I don’t want to touch the stuff because knowing me I’ll get hooked. NA is OK.

    2. HueSatLight

      I wonder why I’m suddenly thinking of Danny from Roomies.

    3. Daibhid C

      I read somewhere that the more puritan a country is about alcohol, the worse its drink problem is, because there’s no culture of social drinking; you drink to get completely smashed. (The example they used was Finland, which apparently views sitting at home getting drunk in your underwear as a cultural touchstone, which the article or whatever it was ties to the fact alcohol sales are a state monopoly reporting to the Department of Health, and it’s relatively recently they stopped literally rationing the stuff.)

      It’s not a theory I entirely buy, because their example of a country that’s not like this was the UK, and my experience is that we’re quite capable of both, but I sometimes wonder if there’s some truth to it.

    4. Mturtle7

      I mean in a way, the impaired judgement is what MAKES you “relax a little”, and vice versa, no? I’ve never actually gotten drunk before, but as I understand it, the point is that your brain slows down, which causes you to worry less about the consequences of your actions, whether for better or for worse. Right?

      1. HueSatLight

        Yes. Ever felt too self-conscious to dance, even though you knew it didn’t really matter if you were any good at it, it’s just for having a good time? Want to be a little more social, but you’re nervous about speaking in front of people you barely know?
        Those are the kinds of judgments people try to impair, by getting tipsy. If that’s not something a person wants to do for themselves, great.

        1. thejeff

          For me, there is a very thin line between too self-conscious to dance and too drunk to dance.

  26. V

    Glanced at panel 4 before reading the speech bubbles and was like “woah, we got to the ‘dorothy and joyce drunkenly make out’ portion of the evening WAY faster than I was expecting!”

    1. Needfuldoer

      Judging by yesterday’s blurry Patreon preview of today’s strip (which cuts the first and last panels off), I was half-expecting Dorothy to be making a move already.

  27. BarerMender

    Fuckin’ tomatoes.

    1. Needfuldoer

      It’s called “pollination”.

      1. Mark

        🙂

  28. BarerMender

    Insta-fantasy from another universe: Joyce after second drink, says “fuck.” Dorothy puts her hand on the back of Joyce’s neck. “Now say, ‘fuck me.'” Joyce takes long pause. “Fuh, fuh…”

    1. a/snow/mous/e

      pretty good

      1. BarerMender

        Thx

  29. The Jighole Man

    i feel like this impaired judgement is going to lead to a kiss, which will lead joyce to have a meltdown because she thinks she cheated on Joe. meanwhile, dorothy struggles with the realization that she may not be totally straight, and has to come to grips with her feelings for joyce

    1. Bash

      I feel like kissing someone else would actually be in the realm of cheating.

      1. Hoboturtle

        Joyce probably wouldn’t reciprocate the kiss and still believe she cheated

      2. Bittersweet

        Kissing someone counts, being kissed might not depending on reaction.

        Though I really don’t want Joe’s first foray into romantic and emotional intimacy to end in becoming a victim of cheating like his Mom. That would make me sad, nobody deserves that. Also, I love Joe/Joyce and like them frankly a lot more than Joyce/Dorothy which feels like it came suddenly out of left field (not immersion breaking, it’s super possibly Dorothy did not unpack anything last semester, it just feels way sudden for me.)

        1. Coatl

          Plus, Joe is trying really hard, and if I’m not mistaken, Dorothy herself has realized in recent interactions that Joe wants to do things right.
          One of the reasons I’m not a Joyce/Dorothy fan is that no matter what, a lot of people want this to appear but don’t seem to care that Joyce is unfaithful as long as she kisses Dorothy.

          And now speaking of Dorothy, her current interaction with Joyce has been portrayed where obviously she is the one who needs to change, but it seems that only she should be the one who should learn and that Joyce no longer needs to learn anything, but, if that happens that kiss (I hope not sincerely), a new conflict would arise for Joyce (something that was already partly necessary), but I don’t want Dorothy to be worse off than she already is.

        2. Amós Batista

          Oh, I don’t want a Becky situation again. I would be more happy if Joyce takes the initiative. This will end the bisexual question a lot of readers have.

      3. The Jighole Man

        i mean, dorothy is going to attack smooch joyce, and joyce is going to be super confused about what just happened, then she’s going to overthink it and call herself a floozie or something. it may lead to a relapse into her old religious self, which joe will have to pull her out of.

    2. DorJoJo

      I can’t imagine this is a situation Joe would actually be upset about, but that won’t stop Joyce from beating herself up over it.

      1. Mr D

        Oh Joe would absolutely be upset about it. Not about Joyce, but about himself. His whole schtick is that he has no self-worth as a romantic partner.

        He’d go all-in on being undeserving of love of affection, and probably do it on his own without involving Joyce on it because he’d see her as completely blameless, it is *him* that is the unlovable monster.

      2. Rabid Rabbit

        I feel that in the abstract, Joe might be fine with it, but the Dorothy factor would come into play. By which I mean:

        “Joe! I have a terrible confession to make!”

        “Um, okay?”

        “I kissed a girl! And I liked it!”

        “Oh. Um. Okay. Uhh… do you think you want to kiss her again?”

        “…yes. Definitely. A lot.”

        “Oh. Okay. … Um, are we still going out?”

        “Yes, yes, absolutely! I still want to bite your ass! But… I do also want to keep kissing her.”

        “…okay. I can work with this. Though, um, one thing…?”

        “Yes?”

        “Can I watch?”

        Or maybe “Is it all right if I watch?” Basically, not asking for a threesome, as he immediately would have done before he grew up a bit, but just wanting to be in the room. Not that he’d say no to the idea of a threesome, of course.

        Except that: It’s Dorothy. And he knows, or at least has a pretty good sense that Dorothy hates him. And so the only option is to be fine with it and agree to sharing Joyce with Dorothy, but with them each having separate days (because you know Dorothy would work out a schedule), leaving him gnawed on each Dorothy-night by a sense of inadequacy that he wouldn’t feel if he could be just a little bit more involved.

        tl;dr: Joe would probably be fine with some form of polyamory, so long as it didn’t make him feel abandoned. And Dorothy’s views on him would probably ruin that.

    3. Steamweed

      “Joe, I have bad news. I am very sorry!”

      “Oh, no, what happened?”

      “Dorothy and I got drunk and kissed each other. A lot.”

      *Joe imagines this and immediately goes into blue-screen-of-death.

    4. Mark

      “What the…fudge, Dorothy! Is there a ‘kiss me!’ sign around my neck that only other girls can see? Why does this keep happening?”

  30. Proxiehunter

    Joyce got a glass of straight up juice with no alcohol didn’t she. Downing that much at once she should feel something. Especially if only one got Dorothy that drunk.

    1. Hoboturtle

      Possibility, though in the other universe Joyce is strangely resilient against alcohol so it could just be that.

      1. Mturtle7

        You know, I completely forgot about that bit of Old Lore. Which makes it much funnier that I already predicted that Joyce would be an extreme heavyweight when it comes alcohol, just because I thought it Made Sense That Way.

    2. Tanglaar

      not necessarily, in itswalky she handled her liquor/alcohol extremely well so i’ve always assumed she was like me. the first time i went out to a bar i ordered long islands since i had always heard that they’ll mess you up bc people dont realize there’s as much alcohol in them as there is and knew from making my own drinks it would take a good amount to get me drunk. was SORELY disappointed that it took 3 to get me buzzed. some people are almost stupidly tolerant :/

  31. Jess

    I think the bartender clocked that Joyce is underage but instead of not serving her or kicking her out, he just gave her the mixer part of the drink.

    1. Rotunda

      Joyce did not meet the bartender—she claimed the booth while Dorothy ordered the drinks.

      1. thejeff

        And since she ordered two of the same drinks, how would the bartender know who was going to get which one? Even if they had someone realized she was underage from across the room.

      2. Needfuldoer

        But did Dorothy remember the textbook?

  32. Amós Batista

    I happy for Joyce.
    From where she came, her strict past, she could execute her own plan to get drunk with her friend. And it is working pretty well.

  33. june gloom

    Tonight we find out that Dorothy is a lightweight.

    Honestly? I wouldn’t be surprised if Joyce could drink the entire cast under the table, including Ruth and Billie.

    1. Weatherheight

      Some people are surprisingly resistant to alcohol; others have variable tolerances to different types of alcohol.
      One of my best friends from college and I would play cards (bridge, spades, hearts) with some friends while drinking. Give him three drink-sevings of beer and he was gone; three glasses of wine and he loosened up but he could drink a bottle of wine in less than an hour and never get more than “happy”. That’s the circumstances that taught me that red wine messes me up hangover wise but dry white wine gets me mellow fast but rarely leaves with a hangover.
      I was pretty small at the time (weight-wise), but on the two or three occasions we drank in earnest, that crowd always passed out and I had to gather keys and pour em into cabs to get them home. moving a set of weightlifters who all had 60 pounds or more on me was no fun (always asked a bouncer we all knew for help.
      Good times…

    2. thejeff

      It would be pretty shocking if she could keep up with Ruth and Billie. Natural tolerances differ, but also build up with exposure and those two are professionals.

  34. The Aussie Bloke

    And just like Walkyverse!Joyce, DoA!Joyce shows she has a higher alcohol tolerance than expected

  35. JA

    Man that second to last panel had me sit up straight when I [mis]read Dorothy’s speech bubble.

  36. JR

    There’s something really sweet about this. Trying something new and scary, not knowing who you’ll become or how it’ll change you, a best friend by your side. I still don’t know why they went the “sneak into a bar” route instead of just, you know, asking a friend for some booze; seems like an foolish upping of the stakes for a first time drinking. But still, this moment is a li’l bit heartwarming, and feels like growing up.

    1. Rebecca

      They went the route of sneaking into the bar because Joyce wanted to do something illegal.

    2. Amós Batista

      Yes, I’m loving this. For real, Willis did a great work here.
      Everthing went nice, Joyce’s plan worked well. I’m proud of her.

  37. Rowen Morland

    The folded umbrella looks a lot like Ronson’s mallet.

  38. Slarstorm

    I don’t particularly want to ship these two, but these strips are making it difficult.

  39. CianM1301

    Called it, this’ll end with a sober Joyce bringing a featherweight Dorothy home on her shoulder.

  40. shrub

    Theres lightweight and then theres this

    1. Da Boy

      She is still conscious so she surpassed Lakan XD

  41. Mr D

    Say I know this isn’t related to much but what happened to the comment section in the old itswalky website? I get locking them down as its been years since the last update, but why can’t they be read anymore?
    Are they really that big of a scum pit?
    Or is it just me and some browser addon going to shit?

    1. HueSatLight

      IIRC, there was a bot infestation

  42. Felgraf

    Ah. I see Dotty is like me, in that she, too, has the metabolism of a humming bird and the alcohol tolerance of a toddler.

  43. Mr.Morningstar

    Im going to laugh if Joyce is somehow able to handle her drink better than everyone

    1. Da Boy

      Makes you wonder if she has any Slav heritage.

    2. Ray

      At that age, I was about Dina’s size, but it took a third shot to make me noticeably impaired. This is the outcome I’m rooting for on sheer comedy level.

    3. Taffy

      O forget, does body fat play a role in alcoholerance? Cuz Joyce has a very powerful advantage in that regard.

  44. Weatherheight

    Regarding the polling question –
    I think it was Ving Rhames in Entrapment who said, “Its’s not the clothes that makes the woman, it’s the woman the makes the clothes.”

    And then Catherine Zeta-Jones comes down the stairs in a bright orange dress that looked hideous in the box and stunning on her. A lot of times clothes become hot by proximity to hotness and/or attitude.

    Let’s face it, Joyce has plenty of both.

  45. DarkoNeko

    don’t disturb the other customers

  46. Taigan

    I think I joked about it a few pages ago, but it suddenly occurs to me that a drunken Dorothy making a move on Joyce is possibly the worst outcome of this scenario

    1. Da Boy

      And imagine if Joe saw that…

      1. Taigan

        Or Becky

        1. Da Boy

          Joe And Becky! Oh the Disaster!

  47. Steamweed

    Dang, Dorothy, that was fast. You gotta empty stomach or what?

  48. Lordhaw

    This brings back memories. I wouldn’t swear as a teenager, a consequence of having to go to church as a kid. So all my non-religious friends would try to get me to swear. They tried REEEAL hard but I wouldn’t do it until college, after drinking of course.

  49. Taffy

    Screw it, I’m now convinced there’s gonna be no smooching or even deliberate flirting during this adventure. They’re not gonna do it, they’ll just drink beverages and maybe eat some crappy bar food.

    1. Woof McGee

      That ship looks pretty dead. But if something was going to happen – seems like this would be the time.

    2. GholaHalleck

      Dotty’s down, but Joyce is not. this is going to blow up in dotty’s face to an embarrassing degree, but it’s going to bring her and Becky together in the clam jam club.

      1. Sharaku

        I feel it can only really go three ways (four if we’re lucky):

        – Nothing happens. Dorothy makes no attempt. Life goes on. BORING!

        – Dorothy kisses Joyce. Joyce pulls back and fraks out. We did this storyline with Becky. NO REPEATS PLEASE.

        – Dorothy kisses Joyce. Joyce leans in… for just a moment, then pulls back. Drama hijinks ensue. YES PLEASE!

        – Dorothy kisses Joyce. Joyce pulls her in. SLIPSHINE!

        (bonus 5th – Dorothy leans in to kiss Joyce. Corpse Mike appears and douses her with a bucket of ice cold water)

    3. Mturtle7

      *Pounds fists on table*

      ONE! OF! US! ONE! OF! US! ONE! OF! US! JOIN, yes, JOIN the anti-JoycexDorothy shippers! There will be ONLY 100% platonic drama and catharsis in this storyline, and we are HERE FOR IT!

      1. Li

        There’s a chasm of difference between “not thinking it’s gonna happen” and “being an anti shipper”, lmao.

        I don’t think it’s gonna happen either, but at this point the contingent of “anti-Joyce/Dorothy” people is so loud and obnoxious that I’m pretty sure I’d be shipping out of spite by now and I’m real close to wishing bad things on Joe just to make y’all sad.

        1. Li

          Ugh. I don’t like that I even wrote that last bit.

          I don’t actually want anyone reading this strip to be sad. I just wish the toxic overreaction to people’s ships would like….. take a break. It is REALLY making reading the comments on this storyline miserable.

        2. Taffy

          I’ll be petty if you don’t wanna. It’s 2024, we can normalise feeling bad about toxic overreactions.

        3. Schpoonman

          There have absolutely been more toxic Joyce/Dorothy shippers than people against it. It’s been more than six months since I smoked my Patreon but there was someone who just wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it and they would insert themselves into every single comment string/conversation.

        4. Li

          Yeah you’ve mentioned them before. Kinda seems like maybe you should re-sub and go yell at them directly, instead of taking out how much they pissed you off on every other person who likes the ship and who hasn’t done anything to you even indirectly.

          Just a thought.

        5. Li

          Like you and your “I sure do love it when Willis baits people who like Joyce/Dorothy, it fills me with such smug satisfaction, I’m preemptively drinking their future tears when the rug inevitably gets pulled out from under them in the future” take on it is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about.

          You are personally making the comment section a more unpleasant place, and seemingly all because of one person who isn’t even here to read what you’re saying.

        6. Li

          sure do wish I could just delete my own comments, I regret saying *anything*.

        7. thejeff

          You can even ship Joyce and Dorothy in the long run, but think that drunken makeouts when Joyce is still barely grappling with dating Joe are a bad idea all around.

        8. Taffy

          And then there are those of us who don’t even care what is or isn’t a bad idea, we just wanna see interesting things happen.

      2. Taffy

        Well, when you put it that way…

        Now I hope they fuck on the table, while the rest of the bar watches and cheers them on like it’s a boxing match. I’m not about to get drafted in some asinine shipping war, especially not as an “anti-” anything. Have your own fun, but keep me the hell out of it.

    4. HueSatLight

      predictions:
      Dorothy discovers / reveals her feelings for Joyce. But forgets when she’s sobered up. Joyce remembers, and asks for advice from Ruth or Jennifer, and maybe they already know because of events we didn’t see at karaoke. Also, Lucy is here and sees everything.

      I don’t know if it’s bad form to talk about preview panels… so rot13.
      Gur znl 4gu cerivrj cnary vf tbvat gb or Qbebgul gelvat gb svther bhg jung fur qvq gur avtug orsber. gurer jvyy or n frysvr bs ure xvffvat Wblpr ba gur purrx gung jbhyq frrz cyngbavp, ohg vg envfrf dhrfgvbaf va ure zvaq.

      finally, when they get back to Read, Dorothy passes out in a chair in the ground floor lobby, but Arnold’s there and helps Joyce get her upstairs. When he asks her how she’s doing the next day, that’s how they start interacting.

      1. DorJoJo

        That is an extremely specific prediction. do you know something we don’t? lol

        1. Taffy

          Look at the gravatar. HSL is 12 steps ahead of the normies when it comes to shipping.

  50. goggleman64

    It’s so curious that the language of comics developed a shorthand for “tipsy” with no relationship to reality.

    Like, when I see little bubbles above a character’s head in a comic, I know they’re tipsy. If I was drinking with a friend and anything approaching “little bubbles above their head” started appearing, I’d know I’d fallen into the Twilight Zone X)

    1. Mark

      Or, perhaps, that you’re tipsy?

  51. Suet

    Impaired judgment doesn’t include impaired taste. It’s like driving down a road that’s getting rainier by the second.

    John’s hovering on the trigger right now to hear Joyce say— OH NO THE MINI UMBRELLA

  52. Rocketboy1313

    I am often the friend that the others try to get loaded because a life of not drinking has left me with a real low tolerance in spite of me being kind of a giant.

  53. Kazuma Taichi

    yea Dotty, of course you wanna hear Joyce say fuck
    maybe with a me afterwards
    >:3c

  54. Rabisch

    This situation where Dorothy is the crazy one and Joyce is the calm and rational one is amazing. It would be so good to see it for a long arc. Probably Joyce is naturally able to not be drunk, but Dorothy seems the kind of person that lose her memories after a glass of something even a bit alcoholic. Cant wait to see what she will say or doing that she will regret tomorrow.

  55. Sajuuk-Khar

    Dorothy all “yer gonna like THIS TOMATO” while pointing both thumbs at her (not)-jugs

  56. Lysbeth

    Characters getting drunk very hard very fast after very little alcohol is good

  57. Nothri

    Did you that the non-zero mass of a photon is 10 – 54 kg ( 5.610 × 10 – 25 MeV c – 2 )? I bring this up so we can compare and contrast the weight of actual light to Dotty being a light weight.

    1. NGPZ

      But mass isn’t the same thing as weight. :p

    2. Yak

      Photons have zero rest mass, what you’re describing is the equivalent mass of a photon which happens to have 1.220E-24 MeV of energy.

      1. NGPZ

        Yee. Moreso, the equivalent mass has not to due with weight (i.e. the degree to which gravitational force accelerates an object) in this case.

        The path of light isn’t really bent by the gravitational field of massive objects, but rather indirectly because the latter curve the space-time around them (black holes being an extreme example of this).

  58. Yeet

    starting to think dorothy in particular should stay away from alcohol
    if her drunk threshold is that low her vomiting horribly threshold isn’t that far off

  59. Booyahman

    Joyce having an impossibly high alcohol tolerance for no reason would be very funny. “Idk, I don’t really feel any different. Oh no, Dorothy do you think I’m ALWAYS drunk?!”

  60. Juanoku

    Bruh that’s not even a full glass what the hell

    1. NGPZ

      On top of being light-weight, perhaps it’s also been at least some hours since the last time she ate something? This allows alcohol a much either path to the bloodstream via absorption in/near the stomach.

  61. HueSatLight

    I thought I might have been imagining it, but the color scheme here is “off”. The shaded areas aren’t as warm as other indoor scenes. Compare https://www.dumbingofage.com/lipgloss/

    It kind of makes the location feel more unfamiliar. If that wasn’t the intention, then happy accident. But “different location, different lighting” is rad either way.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

*

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.